Editorial: Too early for to talk about fee hikes

Our view: Parts of the fee increase proposal are worth discussing, but not the week after voters dug into their own pockets to help matters.

Timing is everything. You don't ask your parents for an iPod the day after bringing home a lousy report card. You don't ask your boss for a promotion the day after making a fool of yourself at the holiday office party. You don't tell your wife you're planning a sequel to your biography the day after you're caught sleeping with the woman who wrote it. And so on.

The California State University trustees haven't displayed the best sense of timing lately. It started more than a year ago, when the CSU board decided to raise student fees by 12 percent, claiming the system was broke, on the same day it gave one college president a $100,000 annual raise. There have been numerous examples since then of the CSU spending unwisely while constantly dinging students for more money.

The latest misstep came last week. Two days after an election where voters chose to tax themselves more to ward off further cuts to education, the CSU was unveiling a plan to raise some student fees.

The targets of the fee increases were seniors who overstayed their welcome, students who repeat classes, and students who want to take more units to get out of school quicker. They were all going to be charged more by the CSU.

Protests came quickly. Everybody from student groups to numerous newspapers to Gov. Jerry Brown himself said the proposed fee increases hadn't even been vetted.

Worse yet, the timing was just awful. If trustees were going to beg the public to pass Proposition 30 and then increase fees anyway, it would haunt the system as long as the $100,000 raise to San Diego State's president has.

Brown announced that he would attend the meeting himself to speak about the proposal. That was enough to get the trustees, led by Chairman Bob Linscheid of Chico, to back off and "seek more input."

As we said in an editorial Saturday, the idea of charging extra for students who had enough units to graduate three or four semesters ago makes sense. Graduate students get charged extra. Why shouldn't students who have earned 160 units, when it takes 120 to graduate? At some point, you have to kick the fledglings from the nest. Otherwise we'd still have 22-year-olds in high school.

But the idea of punishing ambitious students who want to take 18 or 21 units in a semester so they can graduate quicker is ridiculous. Students should be encouraged to take big loads, not financially penalized. The quicker they earn degrees, the sooner new freshmen can be admitted to take their place.

Part of the proposal is worth talking about. Part of it should be jettisoned. But none of it should have been brought up the week after the higher-education community made promises about fees in exchange for support of Proposition 30.